DMTF Newsletter 2008

Management Matters, January 2008	Page 4

Featured Q&A

Question:
Why are DMTF standards and technologies important to the industry?

Answer:
DMTF’s focus is to develop and unify management standards and initiatives for enterprise and Internet environments. Working with key technology vendors and affiliated standards groups, DMTF is enabling a more integrated and cost effective approach to management through interoperable management solutions. The use of DMTF standards ultimately lowers operational costs.

Quote of the Month

Pete Loshin said, in an excerpt from “A Virtualization Primer: Paradigm Shifting in the Data Center with Open Standard Virtualization” in B Eye Network on March 27, 2006:

“Open standards, as with the Internet, make it possible to encapsulate applications and services into manageable packages that interoperate with hardware and other applications safely and efficiently through the abstraction layer of virtualized hosting. The importance of having a standard virtualized configuration as well as a standard for running the virtualized software cannot be overstated.”

TeleManagement Forum and DMTF - Continued

Customers and vendors of both organizations benefit from this effort by having a consistent model from technology through business perspectives. For more information on the TMF/DMTF alliance partnership, click here.

TMF provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the management and operation of information and communications services. Its open membership of more than 600 companies comprises incumbent and new-entrant service providers, computing and network equipment suppliers, software solution suppliers and customers of communications services. TMF has been contributing to the Information and Communications Services (ICS) Industry for more than 15 years.

Conformance, Interoperability and Certification

By Sharon Smith, VP of Interoperability

As DMTF expands its scope of influence and publishes an increasing number of specifications, the organization remains committed to fostering compatible multi-vendor implementations based on DMTF technologies. In heterogeneous data centers and other environments in which multiple vendor solutions are the norm, interoperable industry standards enable the integration and flexibility that are key to controlling costs.

The DMTF Interoperability Committee addresses this critical need, helping ensure that member company implementations conform to specifications. Our plugfests and workshops provide an opportunity for companies to perform conformance and interoperability tests, relaying valuable feedback to the associated Technical Committee working groups. Recently, these events have been organized around a particular specification to facilitate interaction among companies that have implementations based on the latest version.

The DMTF Interoperability Committee is chartered to deliver conformance, certification, and educational programs via the Forums that will enable the DMTF member companies to become conformant to and interoperable with CDM, DASH, and SMASH specifications. In the future, we expect that virtualization will become an integral part of the program as well.

The committee is devoted to facilitating vendor conformance to DMTF specifications, interoperability between vendor implementations, and highlighting vendor product certifications. It is presently working to develop a Conformance and Certification program to enhance these efforts. By highlighting products that have been through the Conformance and Certification program now under development, for example, we can increase the value of the DMTF showcase.

For more information, please do not hesitate to contact DMTF or myself, Sharon Smith, VP of Interoperability, at vp-interop@dmtf.org.

Presentation at Management World Americas

In November, DMTF was featured at the TeleManagement (TMF) Management World Americas 2007 event. Alex Zhdankin, co-chair of the DMTF Telco Work Group and official DMTF representative in the ITU-T Next Generation Network Management Focus Group, presented “SLA Management in Next Generation Networks: DMTF and TMF Join Forces to Address the Challenge.”

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